Exercise 1

Introduction

Ana Gabriela Itokazu 💬

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” – Thoreau (1993)

     I have been working around algae since the my Bachelor’s second year. At first, I got tangled in the taxonomy and systematics i.e. why we name each algae the way we do, and why that species is not another. Generally, it is a dreary task. We go over long keys, spend hours leaning on a microscope crossing eyes, only to get to the conclusion that “yep, not the same alga”. But we do bump into some beauties. To make sure I had the right (or the wrong) one, I’d go over several books and keys, looking for images like the one in Figure 1, for example.

Figure 1. This is one of the first drawings ever made of a Cladophora, from Kützing (1843).

     Later on, I changed subjects to applied biotechnology, where I played around with toxicology, remediation, pollutant removal, and fell in love with ecological restoration. My undergraduate research advisor, Dr. Leonardo Rorig got a grant to prospect algal species for heavy metal removal. After I graduated, I got into the Biotechnology Graduate Program, and started researching with Algal Turf Scrubber Systems (ATS) for nutrient removal and restoration. ATS is a fairly simple system, with a screen placed on top of a flowlane to providing a physical substratum for algae to attach, and grow. Some people maintain similar systems as a hobby to keep the health of their aquaria at home (see the video by the end of this section)! The goal species vary from filamentous to leafy-like algae, and the optimum for my setup were filamentous macroalgae species, such as Ulva intestinalis (see Figure 2). We got to study the succession of algae communities, all the way from an algal-bacterial biofilm, to dense turf-like mats of filamentous algae.

Figure 2. Much better than other people’s algae, it is your own.

     During the Latin-American Congress on Sea Sciences (2017) that I had the honor to help organize, Dr. David Blersch went to Brazil to give a talk and contribute in one of the panel sessions. There, we had the opportunity show him the research we were doing and talk about a possible position as research assistant at Auburn University. We coordinated, and I applied for the Ph.D. program in Biosystems Engineering - which was scary because I’m no engineer, but then I got accepted and I was like

     For the first couple semesters here, I had to take engineering core courses, such as calculus, thermodynamics, and mechanics of materials, but now my life looks like the table below, and it is pretty nice indeed.

Classes Time
STAT 6250 - R Programming for Data Science MWF 14h-14h50
BSEN 6250 - Deterministic Modeling T 12h-14h50 Th 9h-11h50
COMP 6130 - Data Mining MWF 13h-13h50

     Actually, this document is for STAT 6250, it is part of our fist homework. And now I’m done! 🎉 🎈 I still need to go ahead and finish the second, but you know how we feel about homework…


(But hey, don’t forget to click below and watch the DIY Algal Turf Scrubber!)

ATS DIY video

Cary Laurendine Burdick

1

2

3

4

5

6

Harsha Sameera Chathuranga Galkandra Archchige

1

2

3

4

5

6

R Markdown Syntax

1

2

3

4

Equations can be included as blocks:

\[y = X \beta + \epsilon\]

5

Or inline, such as \(A := [a_{i,j}]_{i.j = 1,...,p}\).

6

7

8

References

Kützing, Friedrich Traugott. 1843. Phycologia Generalis: Oder Anatomie, Physiologie Und Systemkunde Der Tange. Brockhaus.

Thoreau, Henry David. 1993. Civil Disobedience, and Other Essays. Courier Corporation.